Now that we’ve let the 1PasswordAnywhere cat out of the figurative bag, our 1Password 3 Feature Spotlight series continues with a look at Software Licenses. In the spirit of providing more secure and convenient access to your website logins, text notes, and wallet information, 1Password 3 will make it easier, and even attractive, to organize the software you own.

For some time, 1Password 2 has allowed you to collect software licenses under the Wallet category. This worked pretty well, but our users quickly began asking us to separate licenses into their own category with unique feature. As a company that likes to put smiles on the faces of its customers, we agreed that a dedicated area for Software Licenses was a great idea.

In 1Password 3, you will be able to catalog and search through your software licenses in a new, dedicated Vault category. Thanks to a major UI overhaul in 1Password 3, your licenses will be showcased with style, featuring gorgeous icons in both the master item list and individual item views.

“But I don’t want to go through all that work of collecting icons and dragging and dropping an application onto each new license I add to 1Password 3!” you exclaim. Never fear! We don’t want to do all that work either, which is why 1Password 3 will search your Mac each time you add a license, looking for the relevant application and automatically snagging a copy of its icon. In rare cases when 1Password may not be able to grab an icon (perhaps for plugins or if you spell the application name differently), you can simply drag and drop the application (or its installer) into 1Password to add your own icon. Heck, if icons aren’t your thing, you can drag in a photo from your Mac or even a product shot from the developer’s website. You are in control of how 1Password 3 represents your software.

Of course, some developers require you to keep track of not just a license code, but an actual file which you must use to verify that you own an application. This is no sweat for 1Password 3, as the new support for attachments extends to Software Licenses, allowing you to include just about any type of file(s) in a license (pictured above, a message is getting dragged out of Mail and into a 1Password 3 as a Software License attachment). Not only will these files be copied into your Agile Keychain, ensuring that they sync between all your Macs if you use a service like Dropbox, they will be encrypted along with all your other 1Password data.

Last, but not least, is that Software Licenses can be tagged in 1Password 3. Tags offer another layer of organization for your 1Password information, allowing you to filter and search your items according to any system you create. Just like attachments, we’ll talk more about tags and what 1Password can do with them in a future post. Also, remember that since we’re still in beta, some features and UI elements may be tweaked for maximum awesomeness by the time we officially ship.

That about covers Software Licenses in 1Password 3, but we have a lot more to talk about in our Feature Spotlight series. Stay tuned to the blog here for more posts that cover some of the major (and wonderfully minor) new features coming in our largest upgrade ever.